Hansard

I confess that when I signed the motion it was more about acknowledging how endometriosis can affect someone than it was about my possessing any knowledge of the condition. However, as a signatory to the motion I was given the opportunity to speak in the debate and to inform myself about the condition and how it affects women. I thank Kenneth Gibson for bringing a debate on the subject to the Parliament and giving members the opportunity to talk about it.

One of the starkest things that I found was the lack of information out there. In this debate we have heard the national statistics many times, but it is difficult to get information that is local to our constituencies. After contacting Endometriosis UK, we struggled to find data on how many women have been diagnosed with or are being treated for the condition in the north-east. However, I was pleased to find that the first British Society for Gynaecological Endoscopy endometriosis centre in Scotland was set up in Aberdeen.

Such centres are not necessarily the centre of a woman’s experience when she has endometriosis. A woman in the north-east to whom I spoke repeated the problem to do with awareness and expressed her concern about the huge length of time that it takes to be diagnosed. I would like to take a minute to share her story. Her symptoms started when she was 15, but the possibility of her having endometriosis was not even considered until her mid-20s, when she was finally diagnosed. That is where women are facing the biggest problem: not enough people are aware of the condition.

She had to endure constant trips to doctors, multiple tests and reviews of treatments that she had undertaken, and all the time, her symptoms were getting worse. Women suffer from endometriosis for an average of seven and a half years before reaching diagnosis, and we forget the impact that that has on a sufferer’s physical and mental health. Although endometriosis is not life threatening, it is certainly debilitating, with the worst cases causing infertility. Mentally, failure to diagnose can cause depression, anxiety and stress about whether symptoms can be eased. It can also have an impact on women’s social lives, making them shut off from friends and loved ones as they suffer in silence.

A statistic that shocked me is that a staggering 1.5 to 2 million women in the UK are affected—the same as the number of those who are affected by diabetes. Diabetes is a condition that most people on the street could speak about for five minutes without doing any research, but endometriosis? I admit that I had to Google it. Many of us are uncomfortable talking about it, and that may be why I did not even know that endometriosis has touched the life of one of my staff.

Raising awareness is easier said than done but when it comes to our health, it should be a priority. In schools across the country, children are receiving guidance on universities, peer pressure and sex education, yet the second most common gynaecological condition is barely mentioned. We should be pushing for increased awareness. We should be talking about the condition in places that can really make a difference. We should make this a conversation that is no longer uncomfortable. While our scientists and doctors across the country continue to research treatments to help women, we as a society can help, simply through our awareness and understanding.